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I 



The Majesty of Calmness 



THE 



Majesty of Calmness 

Individual Problems 
and Possibilities . . . 



BY 



William George Jordan 

Author of " The Kingship of Self-Control : 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revcll Company 

and London 



1 



Republished from the Saturday Evening Post through the 
courtesy of the Curtis Publishing Company. 



Copyright, 1898 and 1S99 

by 

CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Copyright, 1900 

by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 

Entered at Stationers' Hall 



BF639 
69865 •Js-S- 



l-ibr*/y of ConnMM 

NOV 2 1900 

Copyright tntry 
SfcCONfi COPY. 

§«Hv«r«<f tt 

ORDtH DIVISION. 

rJOV 23 1900 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK. 






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Contents 

CHAP. 

I. The Majesty of Calmness 

II. Hurry, the Scourge of America 

III. The Power of Personal Influence 

IV. The Dignity of Self-Reliance . 

V. Failure as a Success . 

VI. Doing Our Best at All Times . 
VII. The Royal Road to Happiness 



PAGE 

7 

12 

18 

24 
31 

38 

47 




The Majesty of Calmness 

jJALMNESS is the rarest quality in human 
life. It is the poise of a great nature, 
in harmony with itself and its ideals. 
It is the moral atmosphere of a life self- 
eentrtdr self-reliant, and self-controlled. Calm- 
ness is singleness of purpose, absolute confidence, 
and conscious power, — ready to be focused in an 
instant to meet any crisis. 

The Sphinx is not a true type of calmness, — 
petrifaction is not calmness; it is death, the 
silencing of all the energies; while no one lives 
his life more fully, more intensely and more con- 
sciously than the man who is calm. 

The Fatalist is not calm. He is the coward 
slave of his environment, hopelessly surrender- 
ing to his present condition, recklessly indifferent 
to his future. He accepts his life as a rudderless 
ship, drifting on the ocean of time. He has no 
compass, no chart, no known port to which he 
is sailing. His self-confessed inferiority to all 
nature is shown in his existence of constant sur- 
render. It is not, — calmness. 

The man who is calm has his course in life 
clearly marked on his chart. His hand is ever on 

7 



8 The Majesty of Calmness 

the helm. Storm, fog, night, tempest, danger, 
hidden reefs, — he is ever prepared and ready for 
them. He is made calm and serene by the reali- 
zation that in these crises of his voyage he needs 
a clear mind and a cool head; that he has naught 
to do but to do each day the best he can by the 
light he has; that he will never flinch nor falter for 
a moment; that, though he may have to tack and 
leave his course for a time, he will never drift, 
he will get back into the true channel, he will keep 
ever headed toward his harbor. When he will 
reach it, how he will reach it, matters not to him. 
Tie rests in calmness, knowing he has done his 
best. If his best seem to be overthrown or over- 
ruled, then he must still bow his head, — in calm- 
ness. To no man is permitted to know the future 
of his life, the finality. God commits to man 
ever only new beginnings, new wisdom, and new 
days to use the best of his knowledge. 

Calmness comes ever from within. It is the 
peace and restfulness of the depths of our nature. 
The fury of storm and of wind agitate only 
the surface of the sea; they can penetrate only 
two or three hundred feet,— below that is the 
calm, unruffled deep. To be ready for the great 
crises of life we must learn serenity in our daily 
living. Calmness is the crown of self-control. 

When the worries and cares of the day fret 
you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe 
under the friction,— be calm. Stop, rest for a 
moment, and let calmness and peace assert them- 
selves. If you let these irritating outside influ- 



The Majesty of Calmness 9 

ences get the better of you, you are confessing 
your inferiority to them, by permitting them to 
dominate you. Study the disturbing elements, 
each by itself, „>ring all the will power of your 
nature to bear upon them, and you will find that 
they will, one by one, melt into nothingness, like 
vapors fading before the sun. The glow of 
calmness that will then pervade your mind, the 
tingling sensation of an inflow of new strength, 
may be to you the beginning of the revelation of 
the supreme calmness that is possible for you. 
Then, in some great hour of your life, when you 
stand face to face with some awful trial, when 
the structure of your ambition and life-work 
crumbles in a moment, you will be brave. You 
can then fold your arms calmly, look out undis- 
mayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your 
hope, upon the wreck of what you have faith- 
fully built, and with brave heart and unfaltering 
voice you may say: "So let it be,— I will build 
again." 

When the tongue of malice and slander, the 
persecution of inferiority, tempts you for just a 
moment to retaliate, when for an instant you for- 
get yourself so far as to hunger for revenge, — be 
calm. When the grey heron is pursued by its 
enemy, the eagle, it does not run to escape ; it 
remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits 
quietly, facing the enemy unmoved. With the 
terrific force with which the eagle makes its at- 
tack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled 
and run through on the quiet, lance-like bill of the 



io The Majesty of Calmness 

heron. The means that man takes to kill an- 
other's character becomes suicide of his own. 

No man in the world ever attempted to wrong 
another without being injured in return,— some- 
way, somehow, sometime. The only weapon of 
offence that Nature seems to recognize is the 
boomerang. Nature keeps her books admirably; 
she puts down every item, she closes all accounts 
finally, but she does not always balance them 
at the end of the month. To the man who is 
calm, revenge is so far beneath him that he can- 
not reach it, — even by stooping. When injured, 
he does not retaliate; he wraps around him the 
royal robes of Calmness, and he goes quietly on 
his way. 

When the hand of Death touches the one we 
hold dearest, paralyzes our energy, and eclipses 
the sun of our life, the calmness that has been 
accumulating in long years becomes in a moment 
our refuge, our reserve strength. 

The most subtle of all temptations is the seem- 
ing success of the wicked. It requires moral 
courage to see, without flinching, material pros- 
perity coming to men who are dishonest; to see 
politicians rise into prominence, power and 
wealth by trickery and corruption; to see virtue in 
rags and vice in velvets; to see ignorance at a 
premium, and knowledge at a discount. To the 
man who is really calm these puzzles of life do not 
appeal. He is living his life as best he can; he is 
not worrying about the problems of justice, whose 
solution must be left to Omniscience to solve. 



The Majesty of Calmness 1 1 

When man has developed the spirit of Calmness 
until it becomes so absolutely part of him that 
his very presence radiates it, he has made great 
progress in life. Calmness cannot be acquired of 
itself and by itself; it must come as the culmina- 
tion of a series of virtues. What the world needs 
and what individuals need is a higher standard of 
living, a great realizing sense of the privilege and 
dignity of life, a higher and nobler conception of 
individuality. 

With this great sense of calmness permeating 
an individual, man becomes able to retire more 
into himself, away from the noise, the confusion 
and strife of the world, which come to his ears 
only as faint, far-off rumblings, or as the tumult 
of the life of a city heard only as a buzzing hum 
by the man in a balloon. 

The man who is calm does not selfishly isolate 
himself from the world, for he is intensely in- 
terested in all that concerns the welfare of hu- 
manity. His calmness is but a Holy of Holies 
into which he can retire from the world to get 
strength to live in the world. He realizes that 
the full glory of individuality, the crowning of 
his self-control is, — the majesty of calmness. 



II 
Hurry, the Scourge of America 




HE first sermon in the world was preached 
at the Creation. It was a Divine protest 
against Hurry. It was a Divine object 
lesson of perfect law, perfect plan, per- 
fect order, perfect method. Six days of work 
carefully planned, scheduled and completed were 
followed by, — rest. Whether we accept the story 
as literal or as figurative, as the account of suc- 
cessive days or of ages comprising millions of 
years, matters little if we but learn the lesson. 

Nature is very un-American. Nature never 
hurries. Every phase of her working shows 
plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of 
hurry. Hurry always implies lack of definite 
method, confusion, impatience of slow growth. 
The Tower of Babel, the world's first sky- 
scraper, was a failure because of hurry. The 
workers mistook their arrogant ambition for in- 
spiration. They had too many builders,— and no 
architect. They thought to make up the lack of 
a head by a superfluity of hands. This is a char- 
acteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy 
a substitute for a clearly defined plan,— the result is 
ever as hopeless as trying to transform a hobby- 
horse into a real steed by brisk riding. 

12 



Hurry, the Scourge of America 13 

Hurry is a counterfeit of haste. Haste has an 
ideal, a distinct aim to be realized by the quick- 
est, direct methods. Haste has a single compass 
upon which it relies for direction and in harmony 
with which its course is determined. Hurry 
says: "I must move faster. I will get three 
compasses; I will have them different; I will be 
guided by all of them. One of them will prob- 
ably be right." Hurry never realizes that slow, 
careful foundation work is the quickest in the 
end. 

Hurry has ruined more Americans than has any 
other word in the vocabulary of life. It is the 
scourge of America; and is both a cause and a 
result of our high-pressure civilization. Hurry 
adroitly assumes so many masquerades of dis- 
guise that its identity is not always recognized. 

Hurry always pays the highest price for every- 
thing, and, usually the goods are not delivered. In 
the race for wealth men often sacrifice time, 
energy, health, home, happiness and honor, — 
everything that money cannot buy, the very 
things that money can never bring back. Hurry 
is a phantom of paradoxes. Business men, in 
their desire to provide for the future happiness of 
their family, often sacrifice the present happiness 
of wife and children on the altar of Hurry. They 
forget that their place in the home should be some- 
thing greater than being merely "the man that 
pays the bills;" they expect consideration and 
thoughtfulness that they are not giving. 

We hear too much of a wife's duties to a hus- 



14 Hurry, the Scourge of America 

band and too little of the other side of the ques- 
tion. " The wife," they tell us, "should meet her 
husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully 
watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sun- 
shine." Why this continual swinging of the 
censer of devotion to the man of business? 
Why should a woman have to look up with 
timid glance at the face of her husband, to " size 
up his mood " ? Has not her day, too, been one 
of care, and responsibility, and watchfulness ? 
Has not mother-love been working over perplex- 
ing problems and worries of home and of the 
training of the children that wifely love may 
make her seek to solve in secret ? Is man, then, 
the weaker sex that he must be pampered and 
treated as tenderly as a boil trying to keep from 
contact with the world ? 

In their hurry to attain some ambition, to 
gratify the dream of a life, men often throw honor, 
truth, and generosity to the winds. Politicians 
dare to stand by and see a city poisoned with 
foul water until they " see where they come in " 
on a water-works appropriation. If it be neces- 
sary to poison an army,— that, too, is but an in- 
cident in the hurry for wealth. 

This is the Age of the Hothouse. The element 
of natural growth is pushed to one side and the 
hothouse and the force-pump are substituted. 
Nature looks on tolerantly as she says : "So far 
you may go, but no farther, my foolish children." 

The educational system of to-day is a monu- 
mental institution dedicated to Hurry. The chil- 



Hurry, the Scourge of America 15 

dren are forced to go through a series of studies 
that sweep the circle of all human wisdom. 
They are given everything that the ambitious 
ignorance of the age can force into their minds; 
they are taught everything but the essentials, — 
how to use their senses and how to think* Their 
minds become congested by a great mass of 
undigested facts, and still the cruel, barbarous 
forcing goes on. You watch it until it seems 
you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you 
instinctively put out your hand and say : " Stop ! 
This modern slaughter of the Innocents must not 
go on!" Education smiles suavely, waves her 
hand complacently toward her thousands of 
knowledge-prisons over the country, and says: 
" Who are you that dares speak a word against 
our sacred, school system ? " Education is in a 
hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do 
what half the time should accomplish by better 
methods, she should not be too boastful. In- 
competence is not always a reason for pride. 
And they hurry the children into a hundred text- 
books, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, 
then into a diploma, then into life, — with a dazed 
mind, untrained and unfitted for the real duties of 
living. 

Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, 
to poise. The old-time courtesy went out when 
the new-time hurry came in. Hurry is the father 
of dyspepsia. In the rush of our national life, the 
bolting of food has become a national vice. The 
words " Quick Lunches " might properly be 



16 Hurry, the Scourge of America 

placed on thousands of headstones in our ceme- 
teries. Man forgets that he is the only animal 
that dines; the others merely feed. Why does 
he abrogate his right to dine and go to the end 
of the line with the mere feeders ? His self-re- 
specting stomach rebels, and expresses its indig- 
nation by indigestion. Then man has to go 
through life with a little bottle of pepsin tablets 
in his vest-pocket. He is but another victim to 
this craze for speed. Hurry means the break- 
down of the nerves. It is the royal road to 
nervous prostration. 

Everything that is great in life is the product 
of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and 
higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its 
growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mush- 
rooms attain their full power in a night; oaks re- 
quire decades. A fad lives its life in a few 
weeks; a philosophy lives through generations 
and centuries. If you are sure you are right, do 
not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of 
family swerve you for a moment from your pur- 
pose. Accept slow growth if it must be slow, and 
know the results must come, as you would accept 
the long, lonely hours of the night,— with absolute 
assurance that the heavy-leaded moments must 
bring the morning. 

Let us as individuals banish the word " Hurry" 
from our lives. Let us care for nothing so much 
that we would pay honor and self-respect as the 
price of hurrying it. Let us cultivate calmness, 
restfulness, poise, sweetness,— doing our best, 



Hurry, the Scourge of America 17 

bearing all things as bravely as we can; living our 
life undisturbed by the prosperity of the wicked or 
the malice of the envious. Let us not be impatient, 
chafing at delay, fretting over failure, wearying 
over results, and weakening under opposition. 
Let us ever turn our face toward the future with 
confidence and trust, with the calmness of a life 
in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and 
slowly and constantly progressing toward their 
realization. 

Let us see that cowardly word Hurry in all its 
most degenerating phases, let us see that it ever 
kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and let us de- 
termine that, day by day, we will seek more and 
more to substitute for it the calmness and repose 
of a true life, nobly lived. 




HI 

The Power of Personal Influence 

HE only responsibility that a man cannot 
evade in this life is the one he thinks 
of least,— his personal influence. Man's 
conscious influence, when he is on 
dress-parade, when he is posing to impress those 
around him, — is woefully small. But his uncon- 
scious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of 
his personality, the effect of his words and acts, 
the trifles he never considers, — is tremendous. 
Every moment of life he is changing to a degree 
the life of the whole world. Every man has an 
atmosphere which is affecting every other. So 
silent and unconsciously is this influence work- 
ing, that man may forget that it exists. 

All the forces of Nature, — heat, light, elec- 
tricity and gravitation, — are silent and invisible. 
We never see them; we only know that they 
exist by seeing the effects they produce. In all 
Nature the wonders of the "seen" are dwarfed 
into insignificance when compared with the 
majesty and glory of the "unseen." The great 
sun itself does not supply enough heat and light 
to sustain animal and vegetable life on the earth. 
We are dependent for nearly half of our light 
and heat upon the stars, and the greater part of 

18 



The Power of Personal Influence 19 

this supply of life-giving energy comes from in- 
visible stars, millions of miles from the earth. 
In a thousand ways Nature constantly seeks to 
lead men to a keener and deeper realization of 
the power and the wonder of the invisible. 

Into the hands of every individual is given a 
marvellous power for good or for evil, — the 
silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. 
This is simply the constant radiation of what 
a man really is, not what he pretends to be. 
Every man, by his mere living, is radiating sym- 
pathy, or sorrow, or morbidness, or cynicism, or 
happiness, or hope, or any of a hundred other 
qualities. Life is a state of constant radiation 
and absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is 
to be the recipient of radiations. 

There are men and women whose presence 
seems to radiate sunshine, cheer and optimism. 
You feel calmed and rested and restored in a 
moment to a new and stronger faith in humanity. 
There are others who focus in an instant all your 
latent distrust, morbidness and rebellion against 
life. Without knowing why, you chafe and fret 
in their presence. You lose your bearings on life 
and its problems. Your moral compass is dis- 
turbed and unsatisfactory. It is made untrue in 
an instant, as the magnetic needle of a ship is 
deflected when it passes near great mountains of 
iron ore. 

There are men who float down the stream of 
life like icebergs, — cold, reserved, unapproach- 
able and self-contained. In their presence you 



20 The Power of Personal Influence 

involuntarily draw your wraps closer around 
you, as you wonder who left the door open. 
These refrigerated human beings have a most 
depressing influence on all those who fall under 
the spell of their radiated chilliness. But there 
are other natures, warm, helpful, genial, who 
are like the Gulf Stream, following their own 
course, flowing undaunted and undismayed in 
the ocean of colder waters. Their presence 
brings warmth and life and the glow of sun- 
shine, the joyous, stimulating breath of spring. 

There are men who are like malarious swamps, 
— poisonous, depressing and weakening by their 
very presence. They make heavy, oppressive and 
gloomy the atmosphere of their own homes; the 
sound of the children's play is stilled, the ripples 
of laughter are frozen by their presence. They 
go through life as if each day were a new big 
funeral, and they were always chief mourners. 
There are other men who seem like the ocean; 
they are constantly bracing, stimulating, giving 
new draughts of tonic life and strength by their 
very presence. 

There are men who are insincere in heart, and 
that insincerity is radiated by their presence. 
They have a wondrous interest in your welfare, 
— when they need you. They put on a "prop- 
erty" smile so suddenly, when it serves their 
purpose, that it seems the smile must be con- 
nected with some electric button concealed in 
their clothes. Their voice has a simulated cor- 
diality that long training may have made almost 



The Power of Personal Influence 21 

natural. But they never play their part abso- 
lutely true, the mask will slip down sometimes; 
their cleverness cannot teach their eyes the look 
of sterling honesty; they may deceive some 
people, but they cannot deceive all. There is 
a subtle power of revelation which makes us 
say: "Well, I cannot explain how it is, but I 
know that man is not honest." 

Man cannot escape for one moment from this 
radiation of his character, this constantly weak- 
ening or strengthening of others. He cannot 
evade the responsibility by saying it is an uncon- 
scious influence. He can select the qualities that 
he will permit to be radiated. He can cultivate 
sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, jus- 
tice, loyalty, nobility, — make them vitally active 
in his character, — and by these qualities he will 
constantly affect the world. 

Discouragement often comes to honest souls 
trying to live the best they can, in the thought 
that they are doing so little good in the world. 
Trifles unnoted by us may be links in the chain 
of some great purpose. In 1797, William Godwin 
wrote The Inquirer, a collection of revolutionary 
essays on morals and politics. This book in- 
fluenced Thomas Malthus to write his Essay on 
Population, published in 1798. Malthus' book 
suggested to Charles Darwin a point of view 
upon which he devoted many years of his life, 
resulting, in 1859, in the publication of The 
Origin of Species, — the most influential book of 
the nineteenth century, a book that has revolu- 



22 The Power of Personal Influence 

tionized all science. These were but three links 
of influence extending over sixty years. It might 
be possible to trace this genealogy of influence 
back from Godwin, through generation and gen- 
eration, to the word or act of some shepherd in 
early Britain, watching his flock upon the hills, 
living his quiet life, and dying with the thought 
that he had done nothing to help the world. 

Men and women have duties to others, — and 
duties to themselves. In justice to ourselves we 
should refuse to live in an atmosphere that keeps 
us from living our best. If the fault be in us, 
we should master it. If it be the personal in- 
fluence of others that, like a noxious vapor, kills 
our best impulses, we should remove from that 
influence, — if we can possibly move without for- 
saking duties. If it be wrong to move, then we 
should take strong doses of moral quinine to 
counteract the malaria of influence. It is not 
what those around us do for us that counts, — it 
is what they are to us. We carry our house- 
plants from one window to another to give them 
the proper heat, light, air and moisture. Should 
we not be at least as careful of ourselves ? 

To make our influence felt we must live our 
faith, we must practice what we believe. A 
magnet does not attract iron, as iron. It must 
first convert the iron into another magnet before 
it can attract it. It is useless for a parent to try 
to teach gentleness to her children when she her- 
self is cross and irritable. The child who is told 
to be truthful and who hears a parent lie cleverly 



The Power of Personal Influence 23 

to escape some little social unpleasantness is 
not going to cling very zealously to truth. The 
parent's words say "don't lie," the influence of 
the parent's life says "do lie.*' 

No man can ever isolate himself to evade this 
constant power of influence, as no single cor- 
puscle can rebel and escape from the general 
course of the blood. No individual is so insig- 
nificant as to be without influence. The changes 
in our varying moods are all recorded in the deli- 
cate barometers of the lives of others. We should 
ever let our influence filter through human love 
and sympathy. We should not be merely an in- 
fluence, — we should be an inspiration. By our 
very presence we should be a tower of strength 
to the hungering human souls around us. 



IV 
The Dignity of Self-Reliance 




ELF-CONFIDENCE, without self-reliance, 
is as useless as a cooking recipe, — with- 
out food. Self-confidence sees the pos- 
sibilities of the individual; self-reliance 
realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in 
the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves 
it out for himself. 

The man who is self-reliant says ever: "No 
one can realize my possibilities for me, but me; 
no one can make me good or evil but myself." 
He works out his own salvation,— financially, 
socially, mentally, physically, and morally. Life 
is an individual problem that man must solve for 
himself. Nature accepts no vicarious sacrifice, 
no vicarious service. Nature never recognizes a 
proxy vote. She has nothing to do with middle- 
men, — she deals only with the individual. Na- 
ture is constantly seeking to show man that he is 
his own best friend, or his own worst enemy. 
Nature gives man the option on which he will be 
to himself. 

All the athletic exercises in the world are of no 
value to the individual unless he compel those 
bars and dumb-bells to yield to him, in strength 
and muscle, the power for which he, himself, 

24 



The Dignity of Self-Reliance 25 

pays in time and effort. He can never develop his 
muscles by sending his valet to a gymnasium. 

The medicine-chests of the world are powerless, 
in all the united efforts, to help the individual 
until he reach out and take for himself what is 
needed for his individual weakness. 

All the religions of the world are but specu- 
lations in morals, mere theories of salvation, un- 
til the individual realize that he must save him- 
self by relying on the law of truth, as he sees it, 
and living his life in harmony with it, as fully as 
he can. But religion is not a Pullman car, with 
soft-cushioned seats, where he has but to pay for 
his ticket, — and some one else does all the rest. In 
religion, as in all other great things, he is ever 
thrown back on his self-reliance. He should ac- 
cept all helps, but, — he must live his own life. 
He should not feel that he is a mere passenger; 
he is the engineer, and the train is his life. We 
must rely on ourselves, live our own lives, or we 
merely drift through existence, — losing all that 
is best, all that is greatest, all that is divine. 

All that others can do for us is to give us op- 
portunity. We must ever be prepared for the 
opportunity when it comes, and to go after it 
and find it when it does not come, or that op- 
portunity is to us, — nothing. Life is but a suc- 
cession of opportunities. They are for good or 
evil, — as we make them. 

Many of the alchemists of old felt that they 
lacked but one element; if they could obtain 
that one, they believed they could transmute 



26 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 

the baser metals into pure gold. It is so in char- 
acter. There are individuals with rare mental 
gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail 
utterly in life because they lack the one element, 
—self-reliance. This would unite all their ener- 
gies, and focus them into strength and power. 

The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesi- 
tating and doubting in all he does. He fears to 
take a decisive step, because he dreads failure, 
because he is waiting for some one to advise him 
or because he dare not act in accordance with his 
own best judgment. In his cowardice and his 
conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. 
He is "not appreciated," "not recognized," he 
is " kept down." He feels that in some subtle way 
11 society is conspiring against him." He grows 
almost vain as he thinks that no one has had 
such poverty, such sorrow, such affliction, such 
failure as have come to him. 

The man who is self-reliant seeks ever to dis- 
cover and conquer the weakness within him that 
keeps him from the attainment of what he holds 
dearest; he seeks within himself the power to 
battle against all outside influences. He realizes 
that all the greatest men in history, in every phase 
of human effort, have been those who have had 
to fight against the odds of sickness, suffering, 
sorrow. To him, defeat is no more than passing 
through a tunnel is to a traveller,— he knows he 
must emerge again into the sunlight. 

The nation that is strongest is the one that is 
most self-reliant, the one that contains within its 



The Dignity of Self-Reliance 27 

boundaries all that its people need. If, with its 
ports all blockaded it has not within itself the 
necessities of life and the elements of its contin- 
ual progress then, — it is weak, held by the 
enemy, and it is but a question of time till it 
must surrender. Its independence is in proportion 
to its self-reliance, to its power to sustain itself 
from within. What is true of nations is true of 
individuals. The history of nations is but the 
biography of individuals magnified, intensified, 
multiplied, and projected on the screen of the 
past. History is the biography of a nation ; biog- 
raphy is the history of an individual. So it must 
be that the individual who is most strong in any 
trial, sorrow or need is he who can live from his 
inherent strength, who needs no scaffolding of 
commonplace sympathy to uphold him. He 
must ever be self-reliant. 

The wealth and prosperity of ancient Rome, 
relying on her slaves to do the real work of the 
nation, proved the nation's downfall. The con- 
stant dependence on the captives of war to do 
the thousand details of life for them, killed self- 
reliance in the nation and in the individual. 
Then, through weakened self-reliance and the 
increased opportunity for idle, luxurious ease 
that came with it, Rome, a nation of fighters, be- 
came,— a nation of men more effeminate than 
women. As we depend on others to do those 
things we should do for ourselves, our self-reli- 
ance weakens and our powers and our control of 
them becomes continuously less. 



28 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 

Man to be great must be self-reliant. Though 
he may not be so in all things, he must be self- 
reliant in the one in which he would be great. 
This self-reliance is not the self-sufficiency of con- 
ceit. It is daring to stand alone. Be an oak, not 
a vine. Be ready to give support, but do not 
crave it; do not be dependent on it. To develop 
your true self-reliance, you must see from the 
very beginning that life is a battle you must fight 
for yourself, — you must be your own soldier. 
You cannot buy a substitute, you cannot win a 
reprieve, you can never be placed on the retired 
list. The retired list of life is, — death. The 
world is busy with its own cares, sorrows and 
joys, and pays little heed to you. There is but 
one great password to success, — self-reliance. 

If you would learn to converse, put yourself 
into positions where you must speak. If you 
would conquer your morbidness, mingle with 
the bright people around you, no matter how dif- 
ficult it may be. If you desire the power that 
some one else possesses, do not envy his strength, 
and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his 
force were yours. Emulate the process by 
which it became his, depend on your self-reli- 
ance, pay the price for it, and equal power may 
be yours. The individual must look upon him- 
self as an investment, of untold possibilities if 
rightly developed, — a mine whose resources can 
never be known but by going down into it and 
bringing out what is hidden. 

Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking 



The Dignity of Self-Reliance 29 

constantly to surpass himself. We try too much 
to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass 
ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of 
progress, that gives a harmonious unifying to 
our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at 
one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, 
that employed 7,000 men and made a rail famed 
throughout the world, was asked the secret of the 
great success of the works. ' ' We have no secret, " 
he said, " but this, — we always try to beat our last 
batch of rails." Competition is good, but it has its 
danger side. There is a tendency to sacrifice 
real worth to mere appearance, to have seeming 
rather than reality. But the true competition is 
the competition of the individual with himself, — 
his present seeking to excel his past. This means 
real growth from within. Self-reliance develops 
it, and it develops self-reliance. Let the indi- 
vidual feel thus as to his own progress and pos- 
sibilities, and he can almost create his life as he 
will. Let him never fall down in despair at dan- 
gers and sorrows at a distance; they may be 
harmless, like Bunyan's stone lions, when he 
nears them. 

The man who is self-reliant does not live in 
the shadow of some one else's greatness; he 
thinks for himself, depends on himself, and acts 
for himself. In throwing the individual thus 
back upon himself it is not shutting his eyes to 
the stimulus and light and new life that come 
with the warm pressure of the hand, the kindly 
word and the sincere expressions of true friend- 



30 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 

ship. But true friendship is rare; its great value is 
in a crisis, — like a lifeboat. Many a boasted 
friend has proved a leaking, worthless ''lifeboat" 
when the storm of adversity might make him 
useful. In these great crises of life, man is 
strong only as he is strong from within, and the 
more he depends on himself the stronger will he 
become, and the more able will he be to help 
others in the hour of their need. His very life 
will be a constant help and a strength to others, 
as he becomes to them a living lesson of the dig- 
nity of self-reliance. 



V 

Failure as a Success 



T ofttimes requires heroic courage to face 
fruitless effort, to take up the broken 
strands of a life-work, to look bravely 
toward the future, and proceed undaunted 
on our way. But what, to our eyes, may seem 
hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a 
greater success. It may contain in its debris the 
foundation material of a mighty purpose, or the 
revelation of new and higher possibilities. 

Some years ago, it was proposed to send logs 
from Canada to New York, by a new method. 
The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind 
great logs together by cables and iron girders and 
to tow the cargo as a raft. When the novel 
craft neared New York and success seemed as- 
sured, a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the 
tempest, the iron bands snapped like icicles and 
the angry waters scattered the logs far and wide. 
The chief of the Hydrographic Department at 
Washington heard of the failure of the experi- 
ment, and at once sent word to shipmasters the 
world over, urging them to watch carefully 
for these logs which he described; and to note 
the precise location of each in latitude and longi- 
tude and the time the observation was made. 

31 



3 2 



Failure as a Success 



Hundreds of captains, sailing over the waters of 
the earth, noted the logs, in the Atlantic Ocean, 
in the Mediterranean, in the South Seas— for into 
all waters did these venturesome ones travel. 
Hundreds of reports were made, covering a 
period of weeks and months. These observa- 
tions were then carefully collated, systematized 
and tabulated, and discoveries were made as to 
the course of ocean currents that otherwise would 
have been impossible. The loss of the Joggins 
raft was not a real failure, for it led to one of the 
great discoveries in modern marine geography 
and navigation. 

In our superior knowledge we are disposed to 
speak in a patronizing tone of the follies of the 
alchemists of old. But their failure to transmute 
the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of 
chemistry. They did not succeed in what they 
attempted, but they brought into vogue the natu- 
ral processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, 
and crystallization ; they invented the alembic, the 
retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other val- 
uable instruments. To them is due the discovery 
of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the 
cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of 
the properties of saltpetre and its use in gun- 
powder, and the discovery of the distillation of 
essential oils. This was the success of failure, a 
wondrous process of Nature for the highest 
growth,— a mighty lesson of comfort, strength, 
and encouragement if man would only realize 
and accept it. 



Failure as a Success 33 

Many of our failures sweep us to greater 
heights of success, than we ever hoped for in 
our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfold- 
ing of success from failure. In discovering 
America Columbus failed absolutely. His in- 
genious reasoning and experiment led him to be- 
lieve that by sailing westward he would reach 
India. Every redman in America carries in his 
name " Indian," the perpetuation of the memory 
of the failure of Columbus. The Genoese navi- 
gator did not reach India; the cargo of "souve- 
nirs " he took back to Spain to show to Ferdinand 
and Isabella as proofs of his success, really at- 
tested his failure. But the discovery of America 
v/as a greater success than was any finding of a 
"back-door" to India. 

When David Livingstone had supplemented 
his theological education by a medical course, he 
was ready to enter the missionary field. For 
over three years he had studied tirelessly, with 
all energies concentrated on one aim, — to spread 
the gospel in China. The hour came when he 
was ready to start out with noble enthusiasm 
for his chosen work, to consecrate himself and 
his life to his unselfish ambition. Then word 
came from China that the "opium war" would 
make it folly to attempt to enter the country. 
Disappointment and failure did not long daunt 
him; he offered himself as missionary to Africa, 
— and he was accepted. His glorious failure to 
reach China opened a whole continent to light 
and truth. His study proved an ideal preparation 



34 



Failure as a Success 



for his labors as physician, explorer, teacher and 
evangel in the wilds of Africa. 

Business reverses and the failure of his partner 
threw upon the broad shoulders and the still 
broader honor and honesty of Sir Walter Scott 
a burden of responsibility that forced him to 
write. The failure spurred him to almost super- 
human effort. The masterpieces of Scotch his- 
toric fiction that have thrilled, entertained and 
uplifted millions of his fellow-men are a glorious 
monument on the field of a seeming failure. 

When Millet, the painter of the "Angelus" 
worked on his almost divine canvas, in which 
the very air seems pulsing with the regenerating 
essence of spiritual reverence, he was painting 
against time, he was antidoting sorrow, he was 
racing against death. His brush strokes, put on 
in the early morning hours before going to his 
menial duties as a railway porter, in the dusk 
like that perpetuated on his canvas, — meant 
strength, food and medicine for the dying wife 
he adored. The art failure that cast him into the 
depths of poverty unified with marvellous inten- 
sity all the finer elements of his nature. This 
rare spiritual unity, this purging of all the dross 
of triviality as he passed through the furnace of 
poverty, trial, and sorrow gave eloquence to his 
brush and enabled him to paint as never before,— 
as no prosperity would have made possible. 

Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of 
circumstance that swings us to higher levels. It 
may not be financial success, it may not be fame; 



Failure as a Success 35 

it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or 
mental inspiration that will change us for all the 
later years of our life. Life is not really what 
comes to us, but what we get from it. 

Whether man has had wealth or property, 
failure or success, counts for little when it is 
past. There is but one question for him to an- 
swer, to face boldly and honestly as an individual 
alone with his conscience and his destiny: 

1 'How will I let that poverty or wealth af- 
fect me? If that trial or deprivation has left 
me better, truer, nobler, then, — poverty has been 
riches, failure has been a success. If wealth 
has come to me and has made me vain, arro- 
gant, contemptuous, uncharitable, cynical, clos- 
ing from me all the tenderness of life, all the 
channels of higher development, of possible 
good to my fellow-man, making me the mere 
custodian of a money-bag, then, — wealth has lied 
to me, it has been failure, not success ; it has not 
been riches, it has been dark, treacherous poverty 
that stole from me even Myself." All things be- 
come for us then what we take from them. 

Failure is one of God's educators. It is experi- 
ence leading man to higher things; it is the reve- 
lation of a way, a path hitherto unknown to us. 
The best men in the world, those who have 
made the greatest real successes look back with 
serene happiness on their failures. The turning 
of the face of Time shows all things in a won- 
drously illuminated and satisfying perspective. 

Many a man is thankful to-day that some petty 



36 Failure as a Success 

success for which he once struggled, melted into 
thin air as his hand sought to clutch it. Failure 
is often the rock-bottom foundation of real 
success. If man, in a few instances of his life 
can say, "Those failures were the best things 
in the world that could have happened to me/' 
should he not face new failures with undaunted 
courage and trust that the miraculous ministry of 
Nature may transform these new stumbling- 
blocks into new stepping-stones ? 

Our highest hopes, are often destroyed to pre- 
pare us for better things. The failure of the 
caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly; the pass- 
ing of the bud is the becoming of the rose; the 
death or destruction of the seed is the prelude to 
its resurrection as wheat. It is at night, in the 
darkest hours, those preceding dawn, that plants 
grow best, that they most increase in size. May 
this not be one of Nature's gentle showings to 
man of the times when he grows best, of the 
darkness of failure that is evolving into the sun- 
light of success. Let us fear only the failure of 
not living the right as we see it, leaving the re- 
sults to the guardianship of the Infinite. 

If we think of any supreme moment of our 
lives, any great success, any one who is dear to 
us, and then consider how we reached that mo- 
ment, that success, that friend, we will be sur- 
prised and strengthened by the revelation. As 
we trace each one, back, step by step, through 
the genealogy of circumstances, we will see how 
logical has been the course of our joy and sue- 



Failure as a Success 37 

cess, from sorrow and failure, and that what 
gives us most happiness to-day is inextricably 
connected with what once caused us sorrow. 
Many of the rivers of our greatest prosperity and 
growth have had their source and their trickling 
increase into volume among the dark, gloomy 
recesses of our failure. 

There is no honest and true work, carried 
along with constant and sincere purpose that 
ever really fails. If it sometime seem to be 
wasted effort, it will prove to us a new lesson of 
"how" to walk; the secret of our failures will 
prove to us the inspiration of possible successes. 
Man living with the highest aims, ever as best he 
can, in continuous harmony with them, is a suc- 
cess, no matter what statistics of failure a near- 
sighted and half-blind world of critics and com- 
mentators may lay at his door. 

High ideals, noble efforts will make seeming fail- 
ures but trifles, they need not dishearten us ; they 
should prove sources of new strength. The rocky 
way may prove safer than the slippery path of 
smoothness. Birds cannot fly best with the wind 
but against it; ships do not progress in calm, when 
the sails flap idly against the unstrained masts. 

The alchemy of Nature, superior to that of the 
Paracelsians, constantly transmutes the baser 
metals of failure into the later pure gold of higher 
success, if the mind of the worker be kept true, 
constant and untiring in the service, and he have 
that sublime courage that defies fate to its worst 
while he does his best. 



/ 



VI 

Doing Our Best at All Times 




IFE is a wondrously complex problem for 
the individual, until, some day, in a mo- 
ment of illumination, he awakens to the 
great realization that he can make it 
simple, — never quite simple, but always simpler. 
There are a thousand mysteries of right and 
wrong that have baffled the wise men of the 
ages. There are depths in the great fundamental 
questions of the human race that no plummet of 
philosophy has ever sounded. There are wild 
cries of honest hunger for truth that seek to 
pierce the silence beyond the grave, but to them 
ever echo back, — only a repetition of their unan- 
swered cries. 

To us all, comes, at times, the great note of 
questioning despair that darkens our horizon and 
paralyzes our effort: " If there really be a God, 
if eternal justice really rule the world/' we say, 
"why should life be as it is? Why do some 
men starve while others feast; why does virtue 
often languish in the shadow while vice triumphs 
in the sunshine; why does failure so often dog 
the footsteps of honest effort, while the success 
that comes from trickery and dishonor is greeted 
with the world's applause ? How is it that the 

38 



Doing Our Best at All Times 39 

loving father of one family is taken by death, 
while the worthless incumbrance of another is 
spared? Why is there so much unnecessary 
pain, sorrowing and suffering in the world — 
why, indeed, should there be any?" 

Neither philosophy nor religion can give any 
final satisfactory answer that is capable of logical 
demonstration, of absolute proof. There is ever, 
even after the best explanations, a residuum 
of the unexplained. We must then fall back 
in the eternal arms of faith, and be wise enough 
to say, '* I will not be disconcerted by these 
problems of life, I will not permit them to 
plunge me into doubt, and to cloud my life with 
vagueness and uncertainty. Man arrogates much 
to himself when he demands from the Infinite the 
full solution of all His mysteries. I will found 
my life on the impregnable rock of a simple 
fundamental truth: — 'This glorious creation with 
its millions of wondrous phenomena pulsing ever 
in harmony with eternal law must have a Crea- 
tor, that Creator must be omniscient and om- 
nipotent. But that Creator Himself cannot, in 
justice, demand of any creature more than the best 
that that individual can give/ I will do each 
day, in every moment, the best I can by the light 
I have; I will ever seek more light, more perfect 
illumination of truth, and ever live as best I can 
in harmony with the truth as I see it. If failure 
come I will meet it bravely ; if my pathway then 
lie in the shadow of trial, sorrow and suffering, I 
shall have the restful peace and the calm strength 



40 Doing Our Best at All Times 

of one who has done his best, who can look back 
upon the past with no pang of regret, and who 
has heroic courage in facing the results, what- 
ever they be, knowing that he could not make 
them different." 

Upon this life-plan, this foundation, man may 
erect any superstructure of religion or philosophy 
that he conscientiously can erect; he should add 
to his equipment for living every shred of strength 
and inspiration, moral, mental, or spiritual that is 
in his power to secure. This simple working 
faith is opposed to no creed, is a substitute for 
none; it is but a primary belief, a citadel, a refuge 
where the individual can retire for strength when 
the battle of life grows hard. 

A mere theory of life, that remains but a theory, 
is about as useful to a man, as a gilt-edged menu 
is to a starving sailor on a raft in mid-ocean. It 
is irritating but not stimulating. No rule for 
higher living will help a man in the slightest, un- 
til he reach out and appropriate it for himself, 
until he make it practical in his daily life, until 
that seed of theory in his mind blossom into a 
thousand flowers of thought and word and act. 

If a man honestly seeks to live his best at all 
times, that determination is visible in every 
moment of his living, no trifle in his life can 
be too insignificant to reflect his principle of 
living. The sun illuminates and beautifies a fal- 
len leaf by the roadside as impartially as a tower- 
ing mountain peak in the Alps. Every drop of 
water in the ocean is an epitome of the chemistry 






Doing Our Best at All Times 41 

of the whole ocean ; every drop is subject to pre- 
cisely the same laws as dominate the united in- 
finity of billions of drops that make that miracle 
of Nature, men call the Sea. No matter how 
humble the calling of the individual, how uninter- 
esting and dull the round of his duties, he should 
do his best. He should dignify what he is do- 
ing by the mind he puts into it, he should vital- 
ize what little he has of power or energy or abil- 
ity or opportunity, in order to prepare himself to 
be equal to higher privileges when they come. 
This will never lead man to that weak content 
that is satisfied with whatever falls to his lot. It 
will rather fill his mind with that divine discon- 
tent that cheerfully accepts the best, — merely 
as a temporary substitute for something better. 

The man who is seeking ever to do his best is 
the man who is keen, active, wide-awake, and 
aggressive. He is ever watchful of himself in 
trifles; his standard is not " What will the world 
say ? " but " Is it worthy of me ? " 

Edwin Booth, one of the greatest actors on 
the American stage, would never permit him- 
self to assume an ungraceful attitude, even in his 
hours of privacy. In this simple thing, he ever 
lived his best. On the stage every move was 
one of unconscious grace. Those of his company 
who were conscious of their motions were the 
awkward ones, who were seeking in public 
to undo or to conceal the carelessness of the 
gestures and motions of their private life. The 
man who is slipshod and thoughtless in his 



42 Doing Our Best at All Times 

daily speech, whose vocabulary is a collection of 
anaemic commonplaces, whose repetitions of 
phrases and extravagance of interjections act but 
as feeble disguises to his lack of ideas, will never 
be brilliant on an occasion when he longs to out- 
shine the stars. Living at one's best is constant 
preparation for instant use. It can never make 
one over-precise, self-conscious, affected, or prig- 
gish. Education, in its highest sense, is con- 
scious training of mind or body to act uncon- 
sciously. It is conscious formation of mental 
habits, not mere acquisition of information. 

One of the many ways in which the individual 
unwisely eclipses himself, is in his worship of 
the fetich of luck. He feels that all others are 
lucky, and that whatever he attempts, fails. He 
does not realize the untiring energy, the unre- 
mitting concentration, the heroic courage, the 
sublime patience that is the secret of some men's 
success. Their "luck" was that they had pre- 
pared themselves to be equal to their opportunity 
when it came and were awake to recognize it 
and receive it. His own opportunity came and 
departed unnoted, it would not waken him from 
his dreams of some untold wealth that would fall 
into his lap. So he grows discouraged and 
envies those whom he should emulate, and he 
bandages his arm and chloroforms his energies, 
and performs his duties in a perfunctory way, or 
he passes through life, just ever "sampling" 
lines of activity. 

The honest, faithful struggler should always 



Doing Our Best at All Times 43 

realize that failure is but an episode in a true 
man's life, — never the whole story. It is never 
easy to meet, and no philosophy can make it so, 
but the steadfast courage to master conditions, in- 
stead of complaining of them, will help him on 
his way ; it will ever enable him to get the best 
out of what he has. He never knows the long 
series of vanquished failures that give solidity to 
some one else's success; he does not realize the 
price that some rich man, the innocent football 
of political malcontents and demagogues, has 
heroicly paid for wealth and position. 

The man who has a pessimist's doubt of all 
things; who demands a certified guarantee of his 
future; who ever fears his work will not be 
recognized or appreciated ; or that after all, it is 
really not worth while, will never live his best. 
He is dulling his capacity for real progress by his 
hypnotic course of excuses for inactivity, instead 
of a strong tonic of reasons for action. 

One of the most weakening elements in the 
individual make-up is the surrender to the on- 
coming of years. Man's self-confidence dims and 
dies in the fear of age. " This new thought," he 
says of some suggestion tending to higher de- 
velopment, "is good; it is what we need. I am 
glad to have it for my children; I would have 
been happy to have had some such help when I 
was at school, but it is too late for me. I am a 
man advanced in years." 

This is but blind closing of life to wondrous 
possibilities. The knell of lost opportunity is 



44 Doing Our Best at All Times 

never tolled in this life. It is never too late to 
recognize truth and to live by it. It repuires only 
greater effort, closer attention, deeper consecra- 
tion ; but the impossible does not exist for the 
man who is self-confident and is willing to pay 
the price in time and struggle for his success or 
development. Later in life, the assessments are 
heavier in progress, as in life insurance, but that 
matters not to that mighty self-confidence that 
will not grow old while knowledge can keep it 
young. 

Socrates, when his hair whitened with the 
snow of age, learned to play on instruments of 
music. Cato, at fourscore, began his study of 
Greek, and the same age saw Plutarch beginning, 
with the enthusiasm of a boy, his first lessons in 
Latin. The Character of Man, Theophrastus' 
greatest work, was begun on his ninetieth birth- 
day. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was the work 
of the poet's declining years. Ronsard, the 
father of French poetry, whose sonnets even 
translation cannot destroy, did not develop his 
poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Benjamin 
Franklin at this age had just taken his really first 
steps of importance in philosophic pursuits. 
Arnauld, the theologian and sage, translated 
Josephus in his eightieth year. Winckelmann, 
one of the most famous writers on classic an- 
tiquities, was the son of a shoemaker, and lived 
in obscurity and ignorance until the prime of life. 
Hobbes, the English philosopher, published his 
version of the Odyssey in his eighty-seventh 



Doing Our Best at All Times 45 

year, and his Iliad one year later. Chevreul, the 
great French scientist, whose untiring labors in 
the realm of color have so enriched the world, 
was busy, keen and active when Death called 
him, at the age of 103. 

These men did not fear age; these few names 
from the great muster-roll of the famous ones 
who defied the years, should be voices of hope 
and heartening to every individual whose courage 
and confidence is weak. The path of truth, 
higher living, truer development in every phase of 
life, is never shut from the individual — until he 
closes it himself. Let man feel this, believe it 
and make this faith a real and living factor in 
his life and there are no limits to his progress. 
He has but to live his best at all times, and rest 
calm and untroubled no matter what results come 
to his efforts. The constant looking backward to 
what might have been, instead of forward to what 
may be, is a great weakener of self-confidence. 
This worry for the old past, this wasted energy, 
for that which no power in the world can restore, 
ever lessens the individual's faith in himself, 
weakens his efforts to develop himself for the 
future to the perfection of his possibilities. 

Nature in her beautiful love and tenderness, 
says to man, weakened and worn and weary 
with the struggle, " Do in the best way you can 
the trifle that is under your hand at this moment; 
do it in the best spirit of preparation for the future 
your thought suggests; bring all the light of 
knowledge from all the past to aid you. Do this 



46 Doing Our Best at All Times 

and you have done your best. The past is for- 
ever closed to you. It is closed forever to you. 
No worry, no struggle, no suffering, no agony 
of despair can alter it. It is as much beyond 
your power as if it were a million years of 
eternity behind you. Turn all that past, with its 
sad hours, weakness and sin, its wasted oppor- 
tunities as light; in confidence and hope, upon 
the future. Turn it all in fuller truth and light so 
as to make each trifle of this present a new past 
it will be joy to look back to; each trifle a 
grander, nobler, and more perfect preparation for 
the future. The present and the future you can 
make from it, is yours; the past has gone back, 
with all its messages, all its history, all its records 
to the God who loaned you the golden moments 
to use in obedience to His law. 



VII 

The Royal Road to Happiness 




URING my whole life I have not had 
twenty-four hours of happiness." So 
said Prince Bismarck, one of the 
greatest statesmen of the nineteenth 
century. Eighty-three years of wealth, fame, 
honors, power, influence, prosperity and triumph, 
— years when he held an empire in his fingers, — 
but not one day of happiness! 

Happiness is the greatest paradox in Nature. 
It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions. 
It defies environment. It comes from within; it 
is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as 
light and heat proclaim the sun from which they 
radiate. Happiness consists not of having, but 
of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It 
is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself. 
A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a 
king on his throne might envy. Man is the 
creator of his own happiness; it is the aroma of 
a life lived in harmony with high ideals. For 
what a man has, he may be dependent on others; 
what he is, rests with him alone. What he ob- 
tains in life is but acquisition; what he attains, is 
growth. Happiness is the soul's joy in the pos- 
session of the intangible. Absolute, perfect, con- 

47 



48 The Royal Road to Happiness 

tinuous happiness in life, is impossible for the 
human. It would mean the consummation of 
attainments, the individual consciousness of a 
perfectly fulfilled destiny. Happiness is para- 
doxic because it may coexist with trial, sorrow 
and poverty. It is' the gladness of the heart, 
— rising superior to all conditions. 

Happiness has a number of under-studies, — 
gratification, satisfaction, content, and pleasure, — 
clever imitators that simulate its appearance rather 
than emulate its method. Gratification is a har- 
mony between our desires and our possessions. 
It is ever incomplete, it is the thankful accept- 
ance of part. It is a mental pleasure in the 
quality of what one receives, an unsatisfiedness 
as to the quantity. It may be an element in hap- 
piness, but, in itself, — it is not happiness. 

Satisfaction is perfect identity of our desires 
and our possessions. It exists only so long as 
this perfect union and unity can be preserved. 
But every realized ideal gives birth to new ideals, 
every step in advance reveals large domains of 
the unattained; every feeding stimulates new 
appetites, — then the desires and possessions are 
no longer identical, no longer equal; new crav- 
ings call forth new activities, the equipoise is 
destroyed, and dissatisfaction reenters. Man 
might possess everything tangible in the world 
and yet not be happy, for happiness is the satis- 
fying of the soul, not of the mind or the body. 
Dissatisfaction, in its highest sense, is the key- 
note of all advance, the evidence of new aspira- 



The Royal Road to Happiness 49 

tions, the guarantee of the progressive revelation 
of new possibilities. 

Content is a greatly overrated virtue. It is a 
kind of diluted despair; it is the feeling with 
which we continue to accept substitutes, without 
striving for the realities. Content makes the 
trained individual swallow vinegar and try to 
smack his lips as if it were wine. Content ena- 
bles one to warm his hands at the fire of a past 
joy that exists only in memory. Content is a 
mental and moral chloroform that deadens the 
activities of the individual to rise to higher planes 
of life and growth. Man should never be con- 
tented with anything less than the best efforts of 
his nature can possibly secure for him. Content 
makes the world more comfortable for the in- 
dividual, but it is the death-knell of progress. 
Man should be content with each step of prog- 
ress merely as a station, discontented with it as 
a destination; contented with it as a step; dis- 
contented with it as a finality. There are times 
when a man should be content with what he 
has, but never with what he is. 

But content is not happiness; neither is pleas- 
ure. Pleasure is temporary, happiness is con- 
tinuous; pleasure is a note, happiness is a sym- 
phony; pleasure may exist when conscience 
utters protests; happiness, — never. Pleasure may 
have its dregs and its lees; but none can be found 
in the cup of happiness. 

Man is the only animal that can be really 
happy. To the rest of the creation belong only 



50 The Royal Road to Happiness 

weak imitations of the understudies. Happiness 
represents a peaceful attunement of a life with a 
standard of living. It can never be made by the 
individual, by himself, for himself. It is one of 
the incidental by-products of an unselfish life. 
No man can make his own happiness the one 
object of his life and attain it, any more than he 
can jump on the far end of his shadow. If you 
would hit the bull's-eye of happiness on the tar- 
get of life, aim above it. Place other things 
higher than your own happiness and it will surely 
come to you. You can buy pleasure, you can 
acquire content, you can become satisfied, — but 
Nature never put real happiness on the bargain- 
counter. It is the undetachable accompaniment 
of true living. It is calm and peaceful; it never 
lives in an atmosphere of worry or of hopeless 
struggle. 

&The basis of happiness is the love of some- 
ing outside self. Search every instance of 
happiness in the world, and you will find, when 
all the incidental features are eliminated, there is 
always the constant, unchangeable element of 
love,— love of parent for child; love of man and 
woman for each other; love of humanity in some 
form, or a great life work into which the in- 
dividual throws all his energies. 

Happiness is the voice of optimism, of faith, of 
simple, steadfast love. No cynic or pessimist can 
be really happy. A cynic is a man who is 
morally near-sighted,— and brags about it. He 
sees the evil in his own heart, and thinks he sees 



The Royal Road to Happiness 51 

the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the 
sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who 
should long for death, — for life cannot bring him 
happiness, death might. The keynote of Bis- 
marck's lack of happiness was his profound dis- 
trust of human nature. 

There is a royal road to happiness; it lies in 
Consecration, Concentration, Conquest and Con- 
science. 

Consecration is dedicating the individual life to 
the service of others, to some noble mission, to 
realizing some unselfish ideal. Life is not some- 
thing to be lived through ; it is something to be 
lived up to. It is a privilege, not a penal servi- 
tude of so many decades on earth. Consecration 
places the object of life above the mere acquisi- 
tion of money, as a finality. The man who is 
unselfish, kind, loving, tender, helpful, ready to 
lighten the burden of those around him, to 
hearten the struggling ones, to forget himself 
sometimes in remembering others, — is on the right 
road to happiness. Consecration is ever active, 
bold and aggressive, fearing naught but possible 
disloyalty to high ideals. 

Concentration makes the individual life simpler 
and deeper. It cuts away the shams and pre- 
tences of modern living and limits life to its truest 
essentials. Worry, fear, useless regret, — all the 
great wastes that sap mental, moral or physical 
energy must be sacrificed, or the individual need- 
lessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A 
great purpose in life, something that unifies the 



52 The Royal Road to Happiness 

strands and threads of each day's thinking, some- 
thing that takes the sting from the petty trials, 
sorrows, sufferings and blunders of life, is a great 
aid to Concentration. Soldiers in battle may for- 
get their wounds, or even be unconscious of 
them, in the inspiration of battling for what they 
believe is right. Concentration dignifies an 
humble life; it makes a great life, — sublime. In 
morals it is a short-cut to simplicity. It leads to 
right for right's sake, without thought of policy 
or of reward. It brings calm and rest to the in- 
dividual, — a serenity that is but the sunlight of 
happiness. 

Conquest is the overcoming of an evil habit, 
the rising superior to opposition and attack, the 
spiritual exaltation that comes from resisting 
the invasion of the grovelling material side of 
life. Sometimes when you are worn and 
weak with the struggle ; when it seems that justice 
is a dream, that honesty and loyalty and truth 
count for nothing, that the devil is the only good 
paymaster; when hope grows dim and flickers, 
then is the time when you must tower in the 
great sublime faith that Right must prevail, then 
must you throttle these imps of doubt and de- 
spair, you must master yourself to master the 
world around you. This is Conquest; this is 
what counts. Even a log can float with the cur- 
rent, it takes a man to fight sturdily against an 
opposing tide that would sweep his craft out of 
its course. When the jealousies, the petty in- 
trigues and the meannesses and the misunder- 



The Royal Road to Happiness 53 

standings in life assail you, — rise above them. Be 
like a lighthouse that illumines and beautifies 
the snarling, swashing waves of the storm that 
threaten it, that seek to undermine it and seek to 
wash over it. This is Conquest. When the 
chance to win fame, wealth, success or the attain- 
ment of your heart's desire, by sacrifice of honor 
or principle, comes to you and it does not affect 
you long enough even to seem a temptation, you 
have been the victor. That too is Conquest. 
And Conquest is part of the royal road to Happi- 
ness. 

Conscience, as the mentor, the guide and com- 
pass of every act, leads ever to Happiness. 
When the individual can stay alone with his con- 
science and get its approval, without using force 
or specious logic, then he begins to know what 
real Happiness is. But the individual must be 
careful that he is not appealing to a conscience 
perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and 
subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who 
is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecra- 
tion, Concentration and Conquest, living from 
day to day as best he can, by the light he has, 
may rely explicitly on his Conscience. He can 
shut his ears to " what the world says " and find 
in the approval of his own conscience the high- 
est earthly tribune, — the voice of the Infinite com- 
muning with the Individual. 

Unhappiness is the hunger to get; Happiness is 
the hunger to give. True happiness must ever 
have the tinge of sorrow outlived, the sense of 



54 The Royal Road to Happiness 

pain softened by the mellowing years, the chas- 
tening of loss that in the wondrous mystery of 
time transmutes our suffering into love and sym- 
pathy with others. 

If the individual should set out for a single day 
to give Happiness, to make life happier, brighter 
and sweeter, not for himself, but for others, he 
would find a wondrous revelation of what Hap- 
piness really is. The greatest of the world's 
heroes could not by any series of acts of heroism 
do as much real good as any individual living his 
whole life in seeking, from day to day, to make 
others happy. 

Each day there should be fresh resolution, new 
strength, and renewed enthusiasm. * ' Just for To- 
day " might be the daily motto of thousands of 
societies throughout the country, composed of 
members bound together to make the world bet- 
ter through constant simple acts of kindness, 
constant deeds of sweetness and love. And Hap- 
piness would come to them, in its highest and 
best form, not because they would seek to absorb 
it, but,— because they seek to radiate it. 



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